Children of the 80s

Underground Atlanta

Concept: “No one can hear you scream deep below the city” (Silence)

Underground Atlanta, located near the CNN Center, began as a railroad depot during Reconstruction, following the Civil War. That building still remains, or at least most of it does, and it’s the oldest building in the city now. After the Great War, the city was getting built up quite a bit, and the lower floors of the businesses around the area got turned into basements, ideal for the shady business of both the Kindred and mortal rum-runners. That’s probably about the time it started going bad. By the end of the decade, though, and the end of Prohibition, the mortals moved elsewhere, and apparently so too did most of the Cainites. For the next few decades, the city beneath the city was the dark home to only God knows what.

In the 60s, right around the time things were getting really weird over in Little Five Points, people started coming back to the Underground. The revival didn’t last, though; the dark heart of the area won, and by the 70s both areas were mostly abandoned and falling apart, and what wasn’t falling apart was being actively demolished by MARTA construction, making the area the center-point of the city’s rail transit system. For most of the 80s, it was a wasteland of crime and drugs, the dark reflection of the nearby, resurgent haven of the weird.

About the same time the city started taming Little Five, efforts were made to clean up the Underground and make it presentable. In 1989, the new, sanitized version was opened to the public, but to those who are sensitive to such things, it’s obvious that the heart of the Underground is still black and festering, no matter how many big box stores and soda museums move in.